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This is Brent coming at you with another
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longus colli, longus capitis, commonly known as our deep cervical
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flexors. These muscles have a propensity to get under active and weak in cervical
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dysfunction as well as play a role in upper body dysfunction. Now we've done a
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couple previous videos where we did stabilization exercises, and then
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stabilization with integration exercises. This exercise is almost a regression
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from those two videos, this is almost pure isolated activation for the deep
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cervical flexors. So I'm going to have my friend Yvette come out, you'll notice
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she's got a little bit of resistive band tape here. What Yvette is going to do is
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she's going to wrap this around the back of her neck because we want to resist
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retraction, and then she's going to push out and hold on to this mirror. So we're just
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going to go ahead and show you that.
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Now let's talk about some of the clever things about this exercise. So as soon as
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she pushed out, I can now cue protraction and depression of her scapula. So now
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we're scapula stabilized, I would say that this part right here is where so
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much deep cervical flexor activation exercise gets totally messed up. This is
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a lot where the compensation happens, so by being able to stabilize her
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shoulder girdle, I just made this exercise a whole lot
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better. Now the second point is i'Il have her holding on to a mirror. So now she's
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got visual feedback on what this should look like, which if you have somebody
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with cervical dysfunction this will be extremely important, because they're
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going to have that tendency to like maybe tilt to one side or maybe rotate a
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little bit as they're trying to pull back, and you want them to be able to
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focus on giving you the best form possible. So now what is the exercise,
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well the exercise is actually fairly simple. All you're going to do is have
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your patient right or client, go ahead and protract, depress as I talked about.
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Make sure their glutes are tight so you got them in good kinetic chain
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checkpoint alignment here, and then have them go into a forward head tilt like
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they're kind of pushing their chin towards the mirror, and then all you're
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going to do is cue a chin tuck and retraction, making sure you pay very
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careful attention to getting as much out of that retraction as you possibly can.
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Chances are if they have cervical dysfunction or upper body dysfunction
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it's not going to be the beginning part of that movement that's hard at all, it's
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going to be those last few degrees that get them back to neutral position, or
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maybe even beyond neutral where you're going to need the most strengthening.
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Let's go ahead and try that again, good and back and of course I would use the
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same acute variables that I use for all my isolated activation exercises, I'd be
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doing 12 to 20 slow repetitions, either a 4-2-2 or a 2-4-2 count, 1-3 sets. I
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have been experimenting with this exercise a little bit, one thing you can
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do is you can kind of move the band so that more of your resistance is
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on the lower cervical spine, mid cervical spine, or upper cervical spine. So let me
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show you guys how that would work, if I thought most of her issue was in the
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lower cervical spine and I really wanted to work on the last few degrees of
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retraction, I might bring this down a little bit lower, giving a little bit
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more tactile stimulation there, and then have her try to tuck and this might be
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harder, might be easier, it might just be different. It's definitely worth
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experimenting with, you can definitely get into a little bit of a mind trip, a
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little bit of a human movement science geek out thinking what segmental
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resistance would do to the cervical spine. Alright and then I can go with the
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upper cervical segments if I thought well that was where most of the problem was
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lying. So let's say she has that atlanto-occipital or C1 C2 dysfunction,
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maybe C2 C3. Good and she's retracting against that. The other thing that does
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is you guys can experiment a little bit with arm position too right, we don't
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want to just be stable in this neutral kind of position at 90 degrees of
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shoulder flexion, but maybe you do want to do a little bit up here and see if
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she can still maintain that good scapular retraction and depression. If
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you want to do it a little lower and see if she can still maintain that shoulder
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girdle stability, how does that feel? And then of course if you guys got
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this right, you've done all your mobility work beforehand you have them go ahead
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and stop the exercise, and you can check their posture again and see if they're
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standing up a little bit straighter. So there you guys go
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isolated activation for the deep cervical flexors, using just a little bit